Johannes Eccard, eminent Berlin Kapellmeister, had been counter-tenor
in the Catholic Hofkapelle in Munich, a choir directed by Orlando
di Lasso. It was a period that was profoundly important in his
musical development. He was clearly influenced by Lasso in terms
of musical word setting and textual fidelity and in the compositional
craft necessary to deal justly with rhythm. He was also influenced
strongly by Martin Luther’s call for hymnal simplicity. This
new ethos, a sweeping away of excess and ‘modishly, elegant
tones’, permeated Eccard’s motet and secular writing too. Polyphony
is relegated, and the leading voice takes the melodic line in
settings of directness and purity.

There are 18 settings in this selection, of which eight are
premiere recordings. The music is in the safest of hands with
the Staats- und Domchor Berlin and Lautten Compagney Berlin
directed by Kai-Uwe Jirka. Ein feste Burg makes for
an appropriate start, opening with a choral tutti and the orchestra’s
appealing contribution focused clearly on the percussion and
brass, in the best German tradition. De Profundis/Aus tiefer
Not is a more ‘mixed’ setting with choral harmonies and
orchestral polyphony demarcated throughout. Hört ich ein
Kuckuck singen is genial and increasingly jubilant, spiced
with tambourine and percussion. The cuckoo motif is brought
out wittily. Melodies are lively, uncluttered and the text’s
sentiment is conveyed with unambiguous directness — just what
Luther ordered.

It was precisely this stripping away of what Luther saw as obfuscation
that Eccard was so good at. Rarely does one find vocal polyphony
at all, the music being stripped back to a rather utilitarian
but not unattractive immediacy of meaning. The solo pieces with
small instrumental accompaniment reprise the approach — on of
the previously unrecorded songs, for example, is the sprightly
Kein Buhlerei ficht mich mehr an, and its charm, allied
to its simplicity, to which one can append the intelligence
of its instrumental backing — Blockflöte, viola, viola da gamba
and violone — measures its success. It surprises me that it’s
never been recorded before.
There is no lack of wit in some of the settings. There’s a deliberately
jokey, horrendously out of tune gag in Der Musik Feind seind
Ignoranten which include a baton rap, a restart, and some
suspiciously Swanee Whistle type noises later on. Is all this
in the score? Unser lieben Hühnerchen seems to start
with — am I right? — a kazoo. The demotic is certainly ever
present, and the earthy, peasant offerings — this one details
the sexual longing of forlorn, cock-less hens — make for entertaining
listening.

A number of the texts are settings of Luther’s translations
of the Psalms. One of the most imposing is Das Vater unser
and it shows the grand, spacious, though still compact reach
of which Eccard was capable, very well caught in the Jesus-Christus-Kirche,
Berlin-Dahlem. Indeed these affirmatory and amusing settings,
sacred and secular alike, show his concentration on the essential
message of the text and the most appropriate way it could be
transmitted to a congregation. Eccard has been well served here
— and do try to hear a companion disc of his sacred songs on
this same label [83.265].

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